StepStone Group’s Post

🚀 Exciting News Today! #Creatio has just raised $200M at a $1.2B valuation, reaffirming our leadership in the low-code business developer space! This funding, led by Sapphire Ventures, will fuel our global expansion and innovation in AI-powered No-Code solutions. We’re thrilled to continue delivering unprecedented time-to-value and flexibility to our customers. Stay tuned for more updates on how we’re revolutionizing the CRM and workflow automation industry. 🌟 This capital raise is a minority investment, with our strategy, innovative product vision, proven leadership team, and unwavering commitment to customer success remaining unchanged. We will use the funds to double down on our R&D investments, empower our strong channel community, and grow the Creatio team globally. We are excited to continue building an enduring company to make a significant and long-term market impact for years to come. https://lnkd.in/eSraqvMX #Creatio #NoCode #FundingNews #AI #Innovation #unicorn #workflowautomation

"Sell a problem, not a product" - this is easier said than done though. Selling a product: “Our scalable products comprise of finance management & governance suite which helps the organization in identifying cost saving & process improvement opportunities.” Selling a problem: “Do you know if all your payments have gone through needed compliance checks from an audit standpoint? How do you make your payments right now?” Why does this matter? Your solution has no value, without a problem! We at GrowQuest (https://growquest.in) help companies scale. #salestips #enterprisesales #b2bsales #saasstartups

If you are a B2B SAAS company - focus on operating leverage… - streamline sales channels. Make them more efficient. Increase conversion ratios from top of funnel to closed status - effective marketing - segment your customer base and fine tune your strategy for each segment - continuously fix product issues, functionality and features to Best in class standard I see some companies growing revenue but expenses growing at a faster rate….usually headcount growth. It may make sense to optimize one segment, perfect it for scale and invest the operating expense leverage to build additional segments by reinvesting profits instead of trying to focus on multiple segments at once. Companies that try to punch above their weight lose focus and waste precious resources and efforts on trying to grow too quickly without having the right capabilities. Then wheels start to spin and growth stalls.

A quote from a recent Lenny's newsletter that founders who are launching products into competitive markets should think deeply about: "Generally, teams think about switching costs as the amount of time and money needed to install one solution and remove another. But true switching costs are much more than that: they include the politics, emotions, career ambitions, esoteric business processes, competing priorities, and sheer laziness that all favor the existing solution. Those forces can be incredibly strong, working to ensure that inferior products can still win (have you ever used ... Salesforce?)." Gaining traction with SMBs/enterprises already using a competitor's tool is challenging for startups because of the high activation energy required for such a switch. Generally, I think startups would have more success if they initially targeted smaller customers who haven't yet fully adopted a larger incumbent's solution, and gradually expand upmarket from there. thanks Jake Fuentes for sharing 🙌🏼

Operating Leverage _____ Everyone loves efficiency again. Hallelujah! In B2B software and other businesses, we use efficiency metrics such as LTV to CAC, Burn Ratio, or ARR per FTE, but all efficiency metrics are fundamentally about operating leverage. Operating leverage is the degree to which a company’s revenue growth outpaces its expense growth. In other words, it’s how much more profit a company can generate from each additional dollar of revenue. In the pre-revenue or even early-revenue days of company building, operating leverage isn't a thing. In the early stages, finding product market fit and proving repeatability are the top priorities. If you can't do that, nothing else matters. But even in the early-revenue days, the best founders start to consider how to create operating leverage. For example, even at less than $1m in ARR, the best founders are thinking about how to reduce the cost of customer onboarding and support while improving the customer experience. This makes every incremental dollar of revenue more valuable. This is operating leverage. The reason high-growth software companies are highly valued (other than in bubbles like 2021), isn't solely the growth rate. It's the growth rate coupled with substantial operating leverage these companies create over a long period of time. The best founders I meet at PHX Ventures start to think about operating leverage pretty early. They can clearly articulate with some specificity how the gross margin will expand, or sales efficiency will improve overtime. Creating operating leverage is on their mind. To be clear, early-stage investors generally don't make investments with operating leverage being top of mind. But we do have to believe that the teams we back will be capable of building great and enduring companies. And great and enduring companies always have real operating leverage. _____ PS - In early 2024, I'm going to start hosting very informal meetups for software Founders / CEOs in PHX. No content, no schedule, no structure. Just company builders spending time together. DM me if you're interested. And if you haven't already, please follow PHX FWD and join our efforts to make PHX a top software city. #founders #startups #phx #arizona #b2bsaas

I speak with founders and executives of SME tech businesses every day with Upgraded. These are the most common trends I've observed: First-time founders in service-primary businesses are usually profitable and plateau around $1-2M/year top-line. Biggest challenge? Usually lead generation. First-time founders in SaaS-primary businesses usually aren't profitable, and plateau around $1-2M/year top-line. Biggest challenge? Usually product-market fit. Experienced founders in any business model usually have profitable companies and plateau at a higher revenue number. Usually between $2-10M/year. Biggest challenge? Usually cash flow management. *Almost* every founder/executive I've met whose company is doing north of $5M/year top-line? 1. Experienced moderate success in a service-based business (either a previous or current one) 2. Have been working on that venture for >4 years. So, how would I start a new business today, with the benefit of having developed a bunch of client relationships and countless more conversations with tech founders about their biggest challenges? Stay tuned tomorrow! #workingcapital #tech #techcommunity #saas #profitability #leadgen #founders #productmarketfit #cashflowmanagement #servicebusiness #longtermvision #getupgraded 🌞 🤙

With 9x annual recurring revenue growth since 2021, Apollo.io becomes the first sales technology unicorn minted in 2023 and one of the fastest growing companies in SaaS. Apollo.io just raised $100 Million!   This Series D funding led by Bain Capital Ventures (BCV), brings our company's total funding to approximately $250 million and nearly doubles our valuation - now at $1.6 billion Our CEO, @ Tim Zheng, talks more about how we've grown 9x over in the last two years in his blog post. Check it out via the link in the comments. If you want to get more involved with Apollo, let me know in the comments. #followapollo → Apollo.io to witness Apollo 3.0 Come hang with us: https://lnkd.in/dZQYCg5z

Super interesting study from Sapphire Ventures at SaaStr 2023 (https://lnkd.in/gQqQJWtm). With the explosion of B2B SaaS in the last 3 - 5 years and the GTM Playbook from at least 5 - 7 years of specializing each step of the funnel (openers, closers, farmers, etc), we'd expect to see higher efficiency and growth, however, the outcome was actually the opposite, with avg quota attainment decreasing from 90% in 2021 to 60% in 2023 due to 3 main reasons: - Zero interest rate and abundance of capital deployed in the market caused a highly competitive environment, specially in the tech b2b industry - The abundance of capital led GTM leaders to plan ahead and invest in other areas of the GTM engine (leading in a drop on the % of investment in quota-carrying sellers), like technology and supporting roles like sdr's, sales engineers, csm's, revops, etc to increase seller productivity, increasing the "sales support" headcount ratio per seller (eg. 3:1 SDR/AE ratio to almost 1:1) - Ultimately, that specialization caused a difusion of responsibility and lack of accountability within the GTM teams and overcomplicated GTM motions with 30+ tools and processes, requiring more processes to manage processes This was a generalized trend in the B2B SaaS industry and it will be interesting to see how the industry will re-adapt. I believe that the industry will take a step back and go back towards - not totally - some kind of generalization within the GTM roles and simplifying it's tech stack.

Startup and emerging tech companies are having a hard time finding repeatable and predictable demand from net new customers, yet are admittedly behind when it comes to executing a formidable upsell, cross-sell, and expansion strategy for existing clients. Gartner has made a huge impact with our clients in this area, supporting them to implement the right tech, tools, processes, and best practices to lift critical KPI's like revenue growth, product usage, average contract value, and many more. Where do you or your team need support to make 2024 as productive as possible? #smarterwithGartner #GartnerforStartups

GTMfund specializes in investing in promising early-stage B2B SaaS companies globally. Their distinctive approach provides us with access to investment opportunities and assists startups with distribution. Leveraging a network of experienced go-to-market professionals, startups receive comprehensive support, including revenue-generating strategies, access to top-tier talent, and overall GTM assistance, ensuring they don't navigate the journey alone. Our Zluck team once again nailed it! 🥂 We have crafted a sleek, secure website for GTM team, exactly how they wanted it. Now, GTM is rocking the online world, drawing in tons of new customers and growing their business like never before. #GTM #GTMfund #WebWizards #InnovationIgnited #WebDevelopment #InnovationInMotion #DigitalDreamBuilders #WebWeaveMasters #WebWarriors #PixelPerfection #InnovateToElevate #DesignDriven #webdevelopmentcompany #webapplicationdevelopment #wordpresswebsite #WebDesigners #AppDevelopers #mobileappdevelopmentcompany #mobileapps #Zluck